


my house won't burn down (or maybe it will)

by pierianabeyance



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, an attempt at it at least, everyone is kinda Mentioned, just go with it kids, the ipre Family.....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 15:28:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11255766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierianabeyance/pseuds/pierianabeyance
Summary: Taako does not mourn his home because he has not lost it.It takes the end of the world twenty times over and more, but home keeps growing. And as long as they all have each other, that's all he needs.--OR: A few thoughts on family, priorities, and loss, by Taako.





	my house won't burn down (or maybe it will)

**Author's Note:**

> UHHHHHH "hey sophia why do all ur fics sound The Same" fuc kfhnjk let me Live.  
> i..havent written anything in a while and this is definitely pretty messy and not proofread so i might come back 2 clean it up later but for now :/ :\ :/ ive just been thinking a lot about taako and found family and Twins so this is really just a mess of thoughts i needed to get out  
> so. attempt at a character study?? sure. ive never really considered myself great at these but Lets Go. just my interpretations of a few things and such. i stayed up all night 2 write this please just let my live

Taako doesn’t spend much time mourning the loss of his world.

The others mourn. They grieve, they all grieve, and it shows differently for everyone - for Davenport, in his stone-faced focus on the mission, like there’s any reason to follow through with it now; for Barry in his red-rimmed eyes and the sniffles that come from behind the door to his room but never let themselves out into the open; for Magnus in his tears, open and raw and such a shameless showing of emotion that for the first few days after, when he’s at his worst, Taako gets fidgety just being in the same room as him. And they all have good reason to mourn, of course, because they all had so much to return to and so much that they lost - they had families, they had homes, they had ideas for the future. Structure, order, plans. Purpose.

The look in Lup’s eyes while she watches them all mirrors the same thought on Taako’s mind:  _ Can’t relate. _

And it’s not like he felt nothing  _ at all.  _ It was his world too, and it’s strange to lose it, but for him it’s different because it was never home. He had no attachments, no connection. He saw a different part of the world entirely. His teammates saw  _ home. _ He saw  _ obstacles.  _ He saw a world that didn’t give a shit whether he lived or died if he didn’t make himself useful, so he made himself useful, but that’s not a connection. It was his world, but it was never his home.

Taako does not mourn his home because he has not lost it.

Lup mourns, but not because she’s lost anything incredibly significant. Lup mourns because that’s the kind of person she is, the kind who cares. She mourns the lives lost that didn’t deserve to be, a sympathetic mourning that rubs off on her over time as she watches Lucretia frantically try to write down every single detail of her family that she can remember so the memories can never be taken away. But it’s not the same mourning, because Lup has not lost her home either, and she has none to mourn.

* * *

 

Lup cares, because that’s who she is. She cares about the lives that are lost, she cares about the people that they can’t save and she cares about the people that they need to save. She looks Taako in the eyes at the beginning of each new year and she tells him the very same thing with more insistence as the years go on.

“This time, Taako. This time we’re going to do this right. We’re going to save this one.”

(She tells herself, too. She’s really the one who needs it more.)

Sometimes they manage it. Sometimes they make it back to the ship at the end of the year bruised and bloodied and out of breath but  _ proud,  _ watching the Hunger descend and knowing that  _ someone _ will make it out,  _ someone _ will survive. It’s not much, but it’s enough. Enough to help them keep their sanity, enough for them to feel like they’re  _ doing _ something, and enough for Lup to keep her head above water.

Taako cares too, because he isn’t heartless. He does what he can for the worlds that they pass through, he does every goddamn thing in his power to help them, he fights just as hard as anyone. Needless destruction of entire civilizations is pretty far down on the list of things that he wants to see, but there are complications. He’s a self-proclaimed pragmatist and he has very strict priorities, priorities that come before playing hero, and the conclusion he comes to is this: at the end of the day, the Hunger can have whatever the fuck it wants as long as Lup is still at his side. The Hunger can devour every world in it comes across, it can take and take and take as mercilessly as it always has and it can continue on its path to destruction, but as long as he’s with Lup, he has his home. And that is what matters to him more than anything else.

* * *

 

Unexpectedly, but inevitably, considering the circumstances, home grows. The walls don’t fall completely, but they start to thin, and the sense of family expands. Suddenly it’s not just Lup who comes to mind when Taako thinks of home, suddenly there’s five more people inside who he couldn’t even get rid of if he wanted to. It takes the end of the world about twenty times over, but suddenly they both have more than they’ve ever had in terms of home.

There’s so much to love about them, all of them. And of course, Taako doesn’t let them know that, because he has a reputation to uphold, but everyone knows without him having to say a thing. He tells them in his own way, without words - by preparing their favorite meal when he knows they have a rough day ahead of them, or by letting them in on whatever joke he’s got in his head. By reaching for the sleeve of Magnus’s jacket when he tries to rush in blindly and telling him to just  _ “Wait, dude, fuck, we don’t even know what’s going on yet”  _ or by asking Merle if he really has to go back to the parley yet, if he can’t just wait a few days, catch up,  _ “It’s been actual years since we’ve seen you for longer than a few minutes, just chill for a second”. _ They’re his family now, whether he intended for them to be or not, and he’s just as fucking scared to lose them as he’s always been to lose Lup.

But still, there’s something different about Lup. A bias, a connection that he’ll never have with anyone else, that he never  _ wants _ to have with anyone else. He’s not just scared to lose her because of the devastation it would cause him, the same devastation it would cause him to lose one of the others permanently, he’s scared to lose her because he cannot imagine a world without her.

So he doesn’t. Or he tries not to, at least. Every so often he gets a taste of what that world would be like, a few months where her passion burns her out too soon, where misfortune strikes at just the wrong moment and she gets caught in the crosshairs. It’s never pretty, a world without her. Time passes slower when he waits for her to come back, and for just a few months he understands what it must have felt like in those first few weeks after the loss of their world, what it must have felt like to mourn. But it’s temporary, all temporary, and soon the grief is relieved and it’s right back to the status quo.

It’s temporary, always temporary, that’s how he keeps himself grounded. And a world without her his painful and colorless and he feels lost even when he’s sitting in his own damn bed, but it’s  _ temporary. _

If just temporary is bad, he doesn’t even want to try to imagine what it would be like to truly lose her.

* * *

 

And so many times -  _ too _ many times - the universe tries to take back everything it’s given him, just like it always does. Because that’s all the universe knows how to do, take, take, take, because maybe sometimes it gives you a reprieve, maybe you spend a few years under a stable roof with meals on the table and something like a nurturing presence guiding you, maybe sometimes you get the chance to be held in someone’s arms and be reminded that  _ you’re young, you’re both so young, you shouldn’t have to do this alone -  _

_ (-but they were never alone, they were always together, the world could take everything but it couldn’t take her) _

Maybe sometimes the world gives you a break, sure. But every time, it’ll take it right back and then some. And the universe tries, it tries its fucking best to take everything back, to grind down their spirits and pluck up their souls and leave Taako with nothing more than a fleeting memory of what it felt like to have them around. Magnus embraces it without realizing, runs towards it with his heart bared and bleeding freely for everyone in his path, gives himself up willingly; others are harder to get ahold of. Lucretia lives around corners on the ship and watches the danger lurking from afar, always staying just two steps out of its reach, but it comes for them all eventually and it gets what it wants.

Magnus dies in blazes of glory, even when he goes in his sleep; Barry dies recklessly in the name of experimentation. Lucretia waits a moment too long and tries to document just a little too much; Davenport never leaves a crewmember behind. They all lose track of Merle’s count after a while, after it stops being fun to keep tally. The marks on the painted-on scoreboard on Taako’s wall aren’t funny anymore by the time year forty rolls around when he realizes that the pain of looking at it far outweighs any amusement he might get from teasing the person with the highest count that year, and when Lup finds him crying after they lose Merle again she helps him paint over it. 

The universe tries to take Taako himself. He’s careful and he knows how to avoid it as long as he can, but even he slips up. Even he’s a moment too late or a moment too slow, and even he ends up under the ruthless hand of the universe as it reaches to pull him away.

The universe tries to take Lup, too. But it can never keep her.

It can never keep any of them, and that’s what makes Taako so goddamn smug about the whole thing, because finally,  _ finally _ he’s won. Once the initial pain of each loss passes, once he’s wiped his tears and picked himself up off the ground he can grin and he can laugh at the sky and remind it that it can’t fucking touch them.

“We’re invincible!” He shouts at someone else’s sky when he doesn’t think anyone is listening, Magnus’s blood dry under his fingernails from earlier that day. “You can’t have us!  _ You can’t have them!” _

The universe tries to take, because that’s all it really knows how to do, but he can only imagine how it must feel for it to realize that they’re all just going to keep coming back, and now he has his family  _ forever. _

* * *

 

It keeps trying, of course. The Hunger, the whole damn  _ world,  _ it never gives up. But neither do they. Taako turns to stone on the cold marble floor of the courtroom in year sixty-five, his hand hardening around Lup’s, who’s no doubt holding on to Barry with her other, the three of them staring up undaunted at the faces of the so-called justices spouting off nonsense. Lucretia fights alone that year, but she fights tooth and fucking nail, and she’s that much stronger for it. Taako bakes in celebration at the beginning of the next year, more elderflower macaroons than anyone knows what to do with because he knows they’re Lucretia’s favorite and he’s  _ so goddamn proud  _ of her, his  _ family _ .

He finds her one night, a few months in, sitting silent in the kitchen with a cup of tea between her hands that’s already gone cold and a vacant look in her eyes. Taako hesitates in the doorway - these sorts of things, these  _ emotions,  _ he isn’t great at dealing with them head on and it seems like that’s what she needs. 

“Can’t sleep?” He asks anyways, forcing himself to step forward into the kitchen and walk towards the stove like he hasn’t noticed anything wrong at all.

Lucretia doesn’t say anything for a moment, like she knows he knows he’s out of his depth here, but then - “I keep having nightmares,” she says, her voice soft in a way he hasn’t heard it since  _ before _ . “Sometimes it’s that they find me too, out there. Or I just can’t get the ship to fly, and it’s the Hunger that gets me. And sometimes-” her voice catches, and she focuses intently at the top of her untouched drink. “Sometimes when I do make it...when everything resets, you’re all just... _ not there. _ And I’m alone forever.”

Taako pauses where he is, hands resting on the edge of the stove but not reaching for anything, and he’s not sure how to respond. Comfort never has been his strong suit, especially not when all he can do is agree with her fears being properly horrifying, and for a stretch of silence that seems to continue on for ages he’s completely at a loss for what to tell her.

Misinterpreting his silence, Lucretia shifts uncomfortably. “It’s pretty...silly, I guess.”

“No, it’s not,” he answers quickly, turning to face her. “It’s...I mean,  _ fuck.  _ It sounds pretty fuckin’ terrifying, being alone like that. I can’t even...I can’t even imagine.”

Lucretia nods. “It was.”

There’s another stretch of silence, and Taako taps his fingers uncertainly against the surface of the stove while he tries to think of a way to fill it. “I, uh. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. Being…” he sighs, lets the last of whatever pretense he was trying to hold up drop. _What the hell,_ he thinks. _It’s been sixty-six years._ “Being without you guys,” he continues, his voice quieter. “Alone like that. That might be the worst thing I could imagine. Even just being without Lup, I don’t...I don’t know what I’d do without her. I don’t know who I’d be if she wasn’t with me. I don’t blame you for being...y’know, shaken up by it or whatever. Who wouldn’t be?” When Lucretia doesn’t answer him right away, he gives her a smile. “But hey, man. You fuckin’ made it, right?”

It takes a second, but she smiles back, finally looking up at him. “Yeah. I made it.”

“We all keep making it,” Taako continues. “And that’s what matters.”

Lucretia’s smile wilts, just a little. “Not all of us,” she reminds him quietly. “Not everyone makes it.”

“No.” He can’t really argue with that. “Not everyone.”

_ But we did,  _ he wants to say.  _ And that’s something, at least. _

* * *

 

_ “We’re gonna become liches, Taako.” _

Apparently Magnus isn’t the only one who insists on diving headfirst into trouble, and even he’s managed to calm himself down over the past couple of decades. It’s such a ridiculous plan, so reckless, so  _ Lup, _ Taako nearly cracks open the bottle he’s got hidden for the end of dinner and downs it right then and there by himself. 

It’s a precaution, he knows that. If everything goes right - when _ everything goes right, nothing can go wrong, he won’t lose her, he  _ can’t _ lose her _ \- then that’s one more layer of security they have, no more worrying about what happens if they all end up statues on a cold marble floor again. It’s risky, but it’s  _ pragmatic _ . Really, Taako couldn’t be prouder to see Lup taking that kind of approach.

But it’s risky, and that’s exactly why he doesn’t like the sound of it at all. It’s risky because it’ll stick. They won’t have their reset to hide behind when the world tries to pull the rug out from under them, they’ll be left fucked when things break bad, which inevitably they will, they  _ must. _

_ This is Lup, _ he reminds himself, trying to keep the whole table from shaking when his knees bounce up and hit the underside.  _ If anyone is strong enough, she is. If anyone can manage this, she can.  _

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t tell her, he doesn’t let on about a goddamn thing, but he doesn’t like it at all. For the first time in a very long time, Taako worries about the possibility of Lup not being invincible, burning herself out without any hope of being relit. But calm as her voice is while she goes on explaining things, as even as she keeps tone because she knows that it’s the tone he needs to be told in, there’s already a fire somewhere deep in her eyes and he  _ knows.  _ She’s doing this. She’s going through with it. Nothing is going to change that as long as she believes that it could benefit the greater good, and not for the first time Taako internally curses his sister for being so goddamn  _ good. _

_ “You are my heart,”  _ she reminds him, like he doesn’t already know.  _ “And that’s not something that can ever be broken, or lost, or taken away.” _

And so it goes.

Three days later, the morning air sends a chill down Taako’s back and he pulls his robe even tighter around himself, trying to hide his shaking hands deep inside the sleeves. Lup and Barry stand tall at the top of the hill and he keeps the safe distance he was told to, watching them whisper to each other, things not meant for him to hear. He catches the end of their conversation, just before they begin -

_ “You ready?” _

_ “Yeah, I got this.” _

When they drop to the ground, Taako very nearly follows them down.

The moment that follows is quite possibly the most terrifying moment of Taako’s life. Red electricity scorches the earth below them and illuminates everything around it, and he stares down at the red light reflecting off of Lup’s glassy eyes and the way that the burning bolts singe the ends of her hair and the sleeves of her robes and for a moment -  _ just _ a moment - he thinks she’s gone. And in that moment, his heart is weighed down with more grief than he’s felt in all his years of life, struck such an immense feeling of loss that he feels himself about to collapse on the grass and wait to be scorched along with it. Without a home, without a heart, without  _ Lup _ \- who would he be?

But he remains standing. And the two spectral forms above them calm, reign in the crackling electricity that surrounds them and hover gently in the air. 

Barry nods. If Taako had any energy left in him, he would nod back, but this day has already worn him out.

Lup stares. She takes another moment to return, a moment too long, a moment that leaves enough room for Taako’s doubts to start back up in the corners of his minds.

_ If anyone can do this, you can.  _

She keeps staring at him, she does not return.

_ You’re strong enough, we both know you are. _

He needs her, he knows that it’s not good to this late in the game, that he has other people now too, and that he’ll always be able to handle himself when the going gets tough, but  _ fuck it _ , he  _ needs _ her, he can’t keep doing this without her.

_ Please. _

Then she’s back, and he knows that it’s her, and sudden laugh bursts out from somewhere in him that he didn’t think he would be capable of as he runs the rest of the way up the hill to hug her, helping her to her feet only to nearly knock her right back on to the ground. He doesn’t even try to tease Barry when he joins in, coming up next to them to wrap his own arms around them both and lean his head up against Lup’s, his own body trembling with relief. 

And they’ve  _ made it.  _ They’ve made it again, somehow, and Taako still has his family with him, he still has everything that the world still can’t take away. He laughs again with his face pressed into Lup’s shoulder, the sound muffled by her robe that smells a little bit burnt but none of them really care about it now, and she laughs with him, and Barry isn’t far behind. And then they’re laughing on top of the hill like it’s the funniest goddamn thing in the world, clinging to each other for dear life, and Taako might be crying a little bit but neither of them need to see that, because  _ goddamnit _ , it  _ worked _ . They all still have each other, and they always will, no matter what the universe tries next.

* * *

 

And then things break, just like they always do. Things break and so much goes wrong, a hundred years worth of fate that they managed to escape comes back to bite them with all the strength it’s built up and it shatters them, it breaks Taako’s family into pieces, and it breaks those pieces into pieces, and it keeps breaking and breaking until there’s nothing left. Things looks bad, things look bad beyond repair, and there will be time to mourn that later but first he just needs to make sure that Lup makes it out the other end, that he and Lup manage to escape hand in hand and run until they find another place to call shelter for a week or two, because he is her heart and she is his home and he cannot imagine a world without her.

Then, of course, someone else takes matters into their own hands, and he doesn’t have much of a choice.

* * *

 

Taako lives his life on the edges of shadows, emerging hesitantly because he has to, because a little engagement with other people is necessary for survival, but he’s always ready to turn and dart right back to safety. He watches his own back - who else is going to? 

Everything is temporary and it suits him just fine, because stability is boring. Stability isn’t even  _ real _ , it’s just waiting a longer time for everything to blow up in his face, and he doesn’t want it. 

He’s fine with his temporary life, caught in the wind and being pushed along by it with nothing to accompany him but the clothes on his back. He doesn’t know anything else.

Taako has no  _ home. _ Taako has no  _ family.  _ Those are luxuries, no,  _ burdens, _ that he cannot bother to afford. Because people let you down. People take from you and they don’t care what it does. People take, because that’s what people do. And Taako doesn’t need them.

Taako cannot imagine a life with anyone but himself.

**Author's Note:**

> this almost became about lup halfway through and honestly i might write a separate thing for her next bc i have Plenty of thoughts on her too  
> goodnihgt its like the middle of the day right now but goodnight


End file.
